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‘Oh yes, I mean . . . I have to go now but maybe another time? I would love to speak to someone who feels like I do.'

‘Well, we all have our moments. My son's name is Jonah.'

‘My daughter's called Maya.'

‘What a beautiful name. I think names matter. I was drawn to the name “Jonah” when I was pregnant, though I've never even read the Bible, but I think I was guided to it because my boy would need to fight harder than most. “We're in the belly of this whale together,” I always tell him.' And that was when her face had lit up, her eyes shining and her cheeks glowing. Anna had taken her number but had never called. She wasn't in the fight with Maya. She was fighting Maya, each and every day.

And she felt guilty about that. She questioned her attachment to Maya and her abilities as a mother. She knew that the only thing she should feel for her child was unconditional love, but the older Maya got, the harder it was to feel that love, and the more the resentment and anger took over. And when Maya physically attacked her, it was worse. You could leave an abusive husband but what about an abusive child—especially one who didn't really
understand that she was hurting you? These thoughts and feelings were anathema to Anna, who had always pictured herself as a better mother than her own. ‘My child won't be scared of my moods,' she had vowed, stroking her belly when she was pregnant. ‘I will always make sure you know how much I love you and that you are the most important thing in my life,' she had whispered to a newborn Maya. ‘I don't like you,' she had whispered to Maya as she watched her sleep after an intense tantrum that had left Anna with a broken wrist, and then she had felt her face flame, and she had stood in the shower hating herself and the terrible human being she had become.

‘I sometimes feel like I've been cursed,' Caro had said in that long-ago conversation about trying again for another child. ‘But then I think I have to be grateful for all that I have. That's what Geoff always says and sometimes I think he's right. Lex is great and we're doing okay. I should be grateful.' Caro had stopped to take a sip of something.

‘What are you drinking?' Anna had asked.

‘A glass of wine. Geoff brought home this great bottle of red. I haven't had any for so long, I forgot how much I liked the taste.'

Anna's tea is finished but she is still not tired, and she thinks about how she had watched Caro's drinking increase over the years. She would have wine when they had lunch together, saying, ‘Might as well now that I'm never getting pregnant again.' And she would sip wine while they spoke at the end of most days. ‘Just to unwind,' she would say but
Anna knew that it was more than that. She knew but she didn't have the energy to help her friend, because she was dealing with Maya and Keith, and her own terrible secrets.

‘Don't you think you should get some rest?' asks Keith, startling Anna.

‘I thought you were asleep.'

‘I was, but I woke up and you weren't there. I was worried. Maybe you should take a pill or something.'

‘I don't want to sleep, Keith.'

‘What do you want then, Anna?'

‘I want to stay awake.'

‘No, I don't mean now. I mean, what exactly do you want? There's no way to make what's happened any easier but I feel like things would be better if we could talk to each other; if we could sit together and remember her. If we could somehow be a couple again, have a real marriage again.'

Anna slows her breathing. He makes her so fucking angry. She cannot find any space, any peace—even in the middle of the night, he is there, needing her to join him in his wallowing. ‘What would you like me to remember first, Keith?' she says, not even attempting to keep the brittle tone out of her voice. ‘Shall I remember the time I was trying to get her into her bedroom and she pushed me down the stairs? Maybe I should remember the time I put her dinner plate in front of her and it had corn on it, because I wanted her to give corn another try, and she picked up the plate and threw it at me so it hit my head and cut me? I guess
I could remember how she used to spit at me when she got angry, just before she hit me. I could remember that.'

‘Anna, that wasn't her. She couldn't help that behaviour. She loved you, Anna, she was just struggling to be in this world.'

‘And now she isn't,' says Anna. She gets up and heads towards the kitchen, leaving Keith in front of the flickering television set.

In the kitchen, she fills the kettle again. She has said the wrong thing, she knows that. She is always saying the wrong thing these days.

Tomorrow, when she goes back to the police station, she will have to make sure that she says only the right things.

‘What do you want, Anna?' asks Keith, and Anna turns to find him standing behind her. He is shirtless, wearing only pyjama bottoms, and she looks at him, his thin frame and small shoulders. His hair is receding, and he squints a little because he is not wearing his glasses.

She knows that other women find him attractive. He has beautiful blue eyes and long dark lashes, and a smile that could grace a dental catalogue, but as she looks at her husband, all she can think is, ‘What did I ever see in him?' But, more importantly than that, she wonders, ‘What did I ever feel for him?'

She cannot help but compare him to the man she sat opposite today, and a picture of Walt and Cynthia entwined appears before her.

‘Anna?'

‘I just want to be left alone, Keith. Surely you can understand that?'

‘I do, Anna,' he says. ‘I get it, but what I want to know is how long you want to be left alone for. A week? A month? The rest of our lives?'

‘What are you talking about, Keith?'

‘Anna, do you think I don't see how you can't stand to be near me, how you don't want me to touch you? I see it, you know. I've seen it for years.'

‘Keith, please. I don't want to have this conversation now. I'm tired and I have to be at the police station again tomorrow.'

‘Yeah, you're tired. I know. I'm tired too. I lost my child two weeks ago and I don't know if I'll ever be able to sleep again, but I think that if I had a wife I could talk to, a wife I could touch and hold, then it would be easier to see a way forward, and I don't feel like I have that.'

Anna watches the kettle, waiting for it to boil again.

‘You know, Keith, sometimes when your mother's words come out of your mouth, it feels like she's standing right here in my kitchen, and I have to say that I would rather not have your mother here all the time.'

‘When did you turn into this person, Anna? You're so bitter and angry, and filled with . . . it feels like you're filled with hate. It feels like you hate me and sometimes it felt like you hated Maya.'

Anna shakes her head. ‘You really do pick your moments don't you, Keith? What would you know about how I felt
about Maya? You didn't want to know about anything except rainbows and sunshine. You never have. Even your own family find your incessant need to be positive about everything annoying.'

‘There's nothing wrong with wanting to see everything in the best possible way, Anna.'

‘So, how are you seeing this in the best possible way, Keith? What is the wonderful result of our daughter having been hit by a car?'

‘I'm not talking about that, Anna. I'm talking about our lives before this. I know what kind of a child she was but I loved her through it, and I've always loved you; no matter how angry you get, and how resentful you become, I will always love you.'

Anna walks over to Keith and puts her hands on his face, looking for something, for anything, that makes her feel the way she is supposed to feel but there is nothing. Something has left her since Maya's death and inside she is empty.

‘I don't feel the same way, Keith,' she says and then stops touching him.

Keith's eyes fill with tears. He had confronted her but Anna knows that he wasn't looking for anything other than reassurance. He is shocked, horrified, at the answer she has given him. Bad marriages muddle along for years without anyone saying anything. Her own parents had been married for forty-five years until her father died, and now her mother rhapsodised about the trips they'd taken and the love they'd shared. In her father's absence,
her mother had rewritten their marriage and edited out the arguments, the weeks she took to her bed, the resentments and the loathing that had eventually been obvious to Anna and Peter.

Anna hadn't known what she was going to say to Keith, but now that the words are out there, she knows it was the right thing to have said them. She cannot live with him anymore, cannot pretend as her parents pretended. She is done. She feels some pity for Keith but mostly she is just irritated that he has pushed her now, in the middle of the night when she has her visit to the police station looming. She knows that she could have been kind, could have simply told him that she loved him, but she's tired of trying to be someone she's not. She's obviously failed at being the mother of an autistic child, failed at being any kind of mother at all. There is no reason for her not to fail at being a good wife and she has no interest in pretending that she is one.

‘Do you want . . . do you want a divorce?' says Keith, and Anna hears the hesitancy in his voice. He's pulled out the big guns, hoping to shock her back into the role she is supposed to be playing. Some couples discuss divorce every week, but Anna and Keith have only ever talked about it when they really felt they couldn't go on, and have always resolved to try again. Anna knows that Keith wants to be a good husband and that he wanted to be a good father, that he always thought they would find a way to make things better, but she has never felt the same way.
Each time, over the years, that she has found herself locked in an emotionally draining conversation about the state of their marriage, Anna has steered things towards resolution. Not because she wanted to remain married to Keith, but because she had always been terrified of being left alone with Maya.

‘Do you, Anna?' Keith says and this time his voice is stronger, as though he is sure she will reply in the negative.

Anna feels something wash over her. For a moment, she isn't sure what it is and then she recognises the feeling. It is relief. She is relieved.

‘Yes, Keith,' she says, ‘I want a divorce.'

‘You can't . . . Anna, what are you saying?'

‘I'm saying that I want a divorce, Keith. You asked, I answered. That's what I want.' Anna concentrates on dunking her teabag in and out of her mug of boiled water, so that she doesn't have to look at him. He stands in the kitchen for a moment longer and she can feel him trying to find something to say but, for once, Keith only has his own words to rely on and Anna knows they are failing him.

He turns away from her and she hears him heading back to their bedroom. The door closes.

She will not go back to bed tonight. She will sleep on the couch.

‘It's over,' she thinks. ‘It's all over,' and again she has the sweet feeling but it is followed by a weight so heavy that she sinks to the kitchen floor.

‘It's over,' she thinks again. ‘All over.'

Chapter Sixteen

Caro walks into the police station with her head held high. ‘I got through the night,' she thinks, and then she imagines firecrackers and banners and confetti because she got through the night.

She has watched programs about addicts and always found their need to celebrate one hundred sober days a little premature, a little ridiculous, but she understands it now, because if she could, she would celebrate every passing minute, despite how awful she feels.

She has not had a drink for twenty-four hours and she feels like . . . shit. But she is where she is supposed to be and, with a little help from Geoff, she has managed to shower and dress. Despite the blazing morning sun, she is dressed in jeans and a jumper because she is chilled and weak. ‘You
should be in hospital,' Geoff had said this morning as he helped her on with her pants.

Yesterday, Caro knows, she had rejected this pair of jeans as too tight but today they are looser at the waist. There is nothing left for her to throw up.

‘I can tell them you're sick,' he said.

‘No, it has to be done. It needs to be finished today. You understand, don't you?'

‘It can be done later, when you feel better, when you've recovered.'

‘I don't think I can recover until it's done, Geoff. The two are connected. Can you help me? Can you just help me?'

‘I'm frightened for you—for us.'

‘I know you are, and I know I should be, but . . .'

‘But?'

‘But I haven't had a drink for twenty-four hours. If you'd asked me two days ago, I would have told you there was nothing more frightening than the thought of giving up drinking. Twenty-four hours ago, the thought of going a day without a drink was impossible and I still can't quite believe I've done it. I thought I would feel better, but even though I don't, I want to keep going. If I can do this, I don't have to be afraid of anything else. I'll get through today and whatever comes after that.
We'll
get through whatever comes after that.'

‘I think you need a lawyer,' he said again as he dropped her off.

‘I know I do. I know I will, but today I'm just going to tell them what happened and let them take it from there.'

‘Is there any chance that the test will come back and you were under the limit?' Geoff said.

Caro had looked at her husband and wanted to nod but she was through with lying about it. ‘I don't think so,' she had said, but as she said the words, she had realised that she does have some doubt about it . . . there's something about her drinking that afternoon that's nagging at her but she can't remember what it is.

‘Okay,' said Geoff. ‘We'll deal with whatever happens. Tell them the story, make them understand.'